Another Notch On The Barrel
by Love Is Suicide
Summary: The dead, they ache, they want, they are near...


I watch as the sun slowly sets behind the building on the edge of Racoon city, the new city of the damned. A wind of dusk blows at my face drying a few drops of sweat that the day had brought from my desperate struggle for survival. I smile in hopes of hiding what damage has been wrought by these mindless abomination moaning pitifully below me on the streets. I don't have to look at them anymore to realize in my soul that they are real and this isn't some horrible nightmare that I might soon wake from. I've seen enough destruction of city and family by they're twisted hands to truely understand that they exist.   
I close my eyes and say a quick pray to whatever god that has kept me alive this long in thanks and hopes I make it to see another day.   
I open my gun, a small pistol, to check how much ammo is left. Only 3 more bullets in the gun and another 30ish in my bag. Damn, I only hope that I might find more or I'll have to resort to a knife. I shudder at the thought of trying to kill them with a knife, having to get close enough to smell them, to see the black looks of decay within there eyes and the cold feel of there flesh... no I can't think like that, I've gotten to far to think those kind of thoughts. I take off my backpack to reload my gun and check what little supples I have left. Some bullets, a combat knife, food, water and a spare gun clip. I take some bullet and reload the gun and fill the spare empty clip. I put everything back into the bag, cock the gun to make sure I'm ready for the future battles tonight will bring and put the now full clip in my front pock, just in case.   
Heaving the backpack onto my shoulder I open the rooftop door of the building and listen inside. A few moans, closer then the ones on the streets, but no shuffling on the steps. A good sign. I might be able to exit this building through the back door and save some ammo. I flick on the stairway lights and quietly walk down the steps keeping my eyes out in case one of those corpses littering the floor boards decides to move. Thankfully they stay quiet and cold.   
Fourth floor, third floor, second floor, this is too easy. Something must be wrong, while the zombies aren't too smart to pull a sneak attack upon me, they aren't so stupid to just let me leave without a fight.   
I open the stairway door and walk out into the second floor hallway and peer around. Just more corpses. A child, no more then five years old, her face chewed to mere strips and maggots crawling along her disembowled intestins. What looks to have been the childs mother laying upon her stomach, reaching out to protect her daughter from whatever crushed her skull. Survival of the fit, death to the living.   
I slowly walk down the hall, past the locked door plastered with long dead blood and escaping roachs.   
As I walk by the child she falls to her side as if to grab me. I turn around and point my gun with new-instilled reflex for my life, ready to shoot her dead a second time if she but moves an inch more. She doesn't move but I keep my pistol aimed at her head, refusing to look away, refusing to give her that single moment she would need to make me apart of her ever growing army of decay. Seconds past and still she doesn't move. I release my breath that I never noticed I was holding and gently lower my gun. This city is driving me insane, I can't sleep these nights because my ears are filled with the calls of hunger from the dead and now I can't ever be awake for fear of my fallen fellow humans.   
Suddenly the child's back starts to pulsate, like her heart was apart of her spine and just started to beat again. I watch in disqusted facination as it continued to pulsate and slowly grow. Then I see what was causing it as it seems to break free. Spiders, lots of them. They have finished eatting at whatever they wanted inside her and are now leaving in hopes of something else. Their fur is covered in dried blood and flaking gore. I cover my mouth in a desperate attempt to keep what little food that was in my down. I turn around and quickly walk away from that sceen and the sounds of the crawling of them.   
I get to the other end of the hall and find no open door and nothing else but a giant window that lead to only a alley with a few restless dead walking about.   
Damn.   
Above me, the floor boards creak with the weight of shifting decay. I gaze at the ceiling in horror as I hear a loud thump of god knows what followed by faint sounds of flesh tearing. In panic I shoot the window infront of me, despate for air and a hopes of escape. Glass shatters in a rain of silver and knives falling into the damned below, slowing but not stopping them.   
Peering out from the window's gap, I fully examine the alley laid out before me. Benieght me three zombies stare at me with raise arms in a sadistic mockery of worship and feasting. The alley's cemented road is littered with trash, aluminum bags from snacks, discarded bottles and streaks of blood, some still fresh, others browned from age. The only things left alive is the scrawls of grafitti splashed upon the bricked wall, screaming into protested against rival gangs and the glory of drugs.   
I turn back towards the hall, my only true escape for the moment. Quietly I walked back to the stairs, hoping that the dead haven't entered the stairwell yet.   
Gently I open the metal door, keeping my gun pointed forward in need to shoot to kill if I must. Silence. Nothing but the echoing of my heart.   
I finish my descence to the ground level of this building. Suddenly I hear it. A scream, an inhuman scream filled with rage and hatred. Only to be followed by a explosion not far from me. Somewhere just beyond the door labeled exit. Fear grips my heart again, this time not from the restless all around me, but from whatever had issued such a challenge against all that lives and breathes. I run away from that exit knowing that it will only lead to that... thing.   
I slam open the door leading towards the front exit with the only thought of escape from this city, mad panic controling my every move, my every vision of all around, my every breath. Behind me another explosion erupts, this time from the stairs. In my panic I look behind me and see the smoke starting to clear. From within the cloud comes forth a black steel barrel being aimed at nothing and being aimed for me.   
I slam my shoulder against an apartment door beside me in a desperate attempt to flee and the wood gives way throwing me onto the floor beyond. Splinters cut along my arm as I fall and I drop my gun without thinking in hopes of stopping the fall. Down the hall, the hammer clicks and a burst of flames is given birth at where I just was.   
Rolling away to avoid being roasted alive I look towards the dying blaze... and into the face of him, kneeling like a lion and ready to pounce upon his pray... me.   
  
  
~To Be Continued~ 


End file.
